Just a reminder. Things you cannot purchase using your gold or silver or diamonds. http://www.nasdaq.com/article/man-accidentally-makes-13-million-buying-a-house-with-bitcoin-cm738868 purchase Amazon items for a discount https://purse.io/ Purchase stuff on the darknet (heck you can't even do that with your $) There's a lot of other places to spend bitcoin on, but you just gotta do your own due diligence
Once the no name exchange goes under and trading is halted on this and you won't have to worry too much about where to spend your worthless bit coins
[you meant your instead of you're] Anything is possible. There are many exchanges, by the way. I can also get hit by a car and die when I go out in the next half hour. That's just the way it goes. I don't make decisions based on disastrous possibilities that may or may not happen. One question, why do you hate bitcoin (and possibly the owners so much)?
Its like when I played poker for a living. Every week you had to pull money out or you risk getting stuck when the site goes under. Its not a matter of if, but when. But profitable if you stay on it.
I don't hate the bitcoin or the owners. Oh by the way who the hell are the owners or the people running the computer any? Good luck finding that one out. I think what has got me on this one is the over excitement about this investment. When in my opinion it is a very very low-quality high high risk thing to put your hard-earned money into. I would expect that the average investor that is all excited about this investment has no clue the risk involved with the exchange situation, the prime hacker attraction and the anonymity of who is behind this thing. I mean the excitement over this investment is approaching cult like status. Example- there's only one other poster in these threads that agrees with me. It's like nobody thinks this thing can crash and burn. People don't do their homework. Has anyone had issues selling their holdings? I bet at minimum the order execution price is questionable. Only time will tell what happens. But a non regulated investment whose ownership and leadership is secret and trades at a no name exchange. I think it is a disaster waiting to happen. Just my opinion
Answers are only for bitcoin cryptocurrency but there are a lot of other cryptos and Ethereum (#2 currently) may surpass bitcoin in market cap at the rate it's growing. https://coincap.io/ All good questions... I run a bitcoin node (which is also a monero node) which is different than a bitcoin miner. You can google and find out the IP addresses (geo location based on that) of the bitcoin nodes worldwide that has a full copy of the bitcoin blockchain (immutable databases). The bitcoin miners are also located worldwide but hashing power is dominated by the Chinese miners as they are also the ones producing the fastest ASIC miners. Excitement? Yea, it is exciting, but as far as crash and burn, would holding at $300 all the way to $1,200, then back down to $150, then to $3,000, currently at $2450 qualify as proof that bitcoin holders know it can crash? I'm only talking of my experience since 2014. Others have much wilder ride than that. I know it can crash to $0, but I think it's a very small chance. Investment? Funnymentals, then... I posted a thread about FACTOM cryptocurency on May 28 (about 3 weeks ago) when it was $12.50 It's now over $30 It's a "real" company in Austin, Texas. Their customers include US Government agencies, Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, Asian bank(s), and recently signed up a Japan Social Security and announced they are about to take on the mortgage industry https://elitetrader.com/et/threads/blockchain-video-from-cnbc.309887/#post-4463197 Selling the bitcoin holdings? Selling bitcoin for $ or any fiat currency is very easy. Do it through exchanges, they will wire the money to your bank. If you don't mind getting some exercise, sell at 10%+ over spot price at https://localbitcoins.com/ I used to buy from Coinbase (small amounts) back when it first hit $1000+ and sell through there, my phone and email would light up all hours of the day and night. I stopped because I got scared as I did not know buying and selling bitcoin is illegal as you need a money-transmitter license (although a Florida case was decided in favor of the defendant when court ruled bitcoin is property). Buying bitcoin is difficult. Selling bitcoin is easy or spending it and you may even get a premium for doing so.
Reading your posts, I have to say you are still very misinformed and jumping to misjudged conclusions. You think that exchanges aren't regulated, but that's not the case. At least: if you really want a regulated crypto-currency Exchange then you have to select the ones which apply to the NewYork-License. Most hardcore bitcoin users hate regulation, but for people like you there are alternatives. Look at Coinbase for instance (here a link to their legal licenses: https://www.coinbase.com/legal/licenses). Coinbase is one of the biggest in the Industry, currently nearly 8 million clients (https://www.coinbase.com/about). And on top of that it is insured for hacks and robbery (https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/1662379-how-is-coinbase-insured-). Further: as I explained to you in another post. It's a decentralized Ledger. So there is no Ownership or Boss or Company, by default! There is no secrecy at all: the source-code and the ledger itself is open to see for everyone. I understand, that for people who are still ignorant about the (financial) potential of decentralized Ledgers, it is hard to understand the hype. It's easy to think it's a bubble if you only look at the price-chart. Yes, it took me months of study to understand it as well (back in 2013). But the moment I understood, I could very well imagine that its value would rise to $7000 (read my old posts from 2013/2014). At this moment I'm pretty sure we will reach that target in 2020 (the year of the next-halving). No cool aid, no hype, just confidence that decentralized ledgers have a huge potential in valuable features. {and now let come the trolls, which I will ignore: they are the ignorants who regret that they didn't listen years ago}
Sure keeping money in bitcoin brokers is high risk, but its also high reward because its a quite inneficient market due lack of professional money managers. This is a liquid market where you are up against idiotic criminals and retail peeps. With lots of volatility, range, etc. There is a lot of easy money to be made there
Ok, so let's go ahead and clear some of the misconceptions here. Regulated markets offering protection is very true. But at the end of the day much of this protection is smoke and mirrors anyway. PFOF (designed by Bernie Madoff and still a standard practice) and frontrunning affect execution (if you need examples I have plenty of them) but since market fragmentation prevents any in-depth analysis of price improvement we will just have to accept the "facts" we are given. I am not disagreeing with you but simply offering the alternative view that the protections in regulated markets are not the same for all partipants. Not sure what difficulties you are referring to with regulated markets but of the 5 cryptoexchanges I have used the hardest part is being required to open my email and confirm the withdrawal. Fiat, yes, that is a different story, but bitcoins etc, much easier and much faster than regulated exchanges. Most cryptoexchanges are located outside of the US is a truth. But the reason for this? Regulation. The only IRS guidance issued thus far (although more is coming very very soon) is that cryptocurrencies are assets and should be taxed accordingly. Why would an exchange want to be headquartered in the US when the future regulatory landscape is uncertain at best. Given the absolutely pathetic approach by NYS and the "Bitlicense" which I guarantee has only increased the illicit obtaining of cryptocurrencies within the state and meanwhile other states are passing legislation that is the exact opposite. Oh, and don't forget that the guy who spearheaded this typical-corrupt-NY legislation resigned shortly thereafter to open a consulting firm to assist companies with understanding and obtaining one of these ShitLicenses. I agree with you. But let me tell you where I am coming from. The first bitcoin I bought was for around $15 back in 2013. At that point in time, I had to wire money to a random (read: sketchy) bank. Bought more than 1 to make the wire fee worth it though. Bought a few items from the darknet and was a happy camper. Then the whole silk road fiasco happened and I steered clear for a while. 2014 and 2015 I remember the price fluctuating between 200 to 500ish and Coinbase was now a much easier means of buying coins. I never really held them as an investment but merely used them to buy things one cannot buy with dollars. 2016 and now 2017 I have seen the price go parabolic. I had an account on a marketplace where I had left like 0.02btc or something in the account simply because it was like 4 bucks at the time. Recently I took it out since it was worth nearly 40 dollars at the time. But I completely realize and accept that it could just have easily been 40 cents instead. The current state of bitcoin has attracted a massive amount of herd following fools. But this is not a phenomenon unique to bitcoin and is simply a phenomenon of humans and crowds. Bubbles have been around for centuries (just think of the Tulip bulbs in Holland). People are going to throw money into plenty of stupid shit but at the end of the day it is their choice and even if it is not bitcoin it will be something else. Thanks for that amazon link! haha Purchase stuff on the darknet - be careful, if people find out that there are amazon.coms specifically for high quality drugs they might go down a road they can't handle. And yes, certainly a decent number of places to spend bitcoin which seems to be growing which is nice. I pay some of my recurring bills using bitcoin (some of which offer a discount for paying with bitcoin; not to mention my buy low and pay bills high strategy discount). Highly unlikely. And which exchange are you referring to? There are nearly 40 now: https://www.bestbitcoinexchange.io/. The majority of which do not charge commissions and only maker taker fees which are very reasonable. Oh and pretty much all of them offer APIs to access market data for FREE. Just take a look at the fees for data from the NYSE and NASDAQ. Regulated markets is a bullshit term given who makes the regulations. The anonymity of the owners is one of the basic premises of bitcoin and is something that I find attractive about it. Who the hell are the owners of all the shares of MSFT or the owners of each USD? You are correct though as I believe I mentioned. The average investor, most of which probably didn't even know BTC existed a year ago, are mostly fools. This camp reminds me in some ways of the penny stock people and in many ways it is very similar. Selling holdings is extremely easy. And transparent. Execution price is EXACTLY what the terms of buy sell orders should be. None of this tenth of a cent bullshit. None of the my order to sell 2000 coins when there are 2000 on the bid only yields a partial fill. Some exchanges do execute in ways that are not typical but they clearly state their procedure prior to you being able to make a trade. Sure, it very much could be a disaster waiting to happen but honestly, I think the biggest disaster will be governments, regulators, and central banks getting involved and f**king things up. They should just stick to printing money (by the way, bitcoin has a set quantity that will ever be able to exist whereas who the hell knows how many dollars there are currently). You can also short bitcoin too if you truly feel as though it is going to crash and burn. I agree with this post in entirety and confirm that it is the most correct/factual/insightful post I've seen on this thread. Sorry for the TLDR post but I just feel that there too many divisions among society at the moment that we don't really need another one. Everyone is going to feel differently about investments. I think TSLA is garbage but I'm sure others would highly disagree. Thats the beauty of living in a world where we have the freedom to make our own decisions. We should be thankful others have different views and opinions rather than chastise them because they are not the same as our own.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention, look at the spread between exchanges. Then realize the spread on each exchange is usually 1 to 5 dollars. If you know anything about market making or arbitrage then you should be drooling at the opportunity.